Mumbai: After Yes Bank was placed under moratorium, digital payments were impacted as ‘PhonePe’, which depends on the cash-strapped lender for its transactions, could not operate.
It can be noted that the bank’s own net banking facilities have not been operational since Thursday evening. Other fintech operators who rely on Yes Bank to settle their transactions are also down.
“We sincerely regret the long outage. Our partner bank (Yes Bank) was placed under moratorium by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Entire team’s been working all night to get services back up asap (as soon as possible),” the app’s chief executive Sameer Nigam tweeted early Friday morning.
‘PhonePe’, one of the country’s largest digital payment platforms, is dependent on Yes Bank to process its transactions. Nigam added that the app hopes to be live in a ‘few hours’.
Yes Bank placed under a moratorium Thursday evening, with the RBI capping deposit withdrawals at Rs 50,000 per account for a month and superseding its board. For the next month, Yes Bank will led by the RBI-appointed administrator Prashant Kumar, an ex-chief financial officer of SBI.
Meanwhile in another development the National Stock Exchange (NSE) put restrictions Friday on Yes Bank shares in various segments, including futures and options.
The categories placed under restriction include debt, securities lending and borrowing scheme, currency derivatives, commodity derivatives, futures and options, as per notification by NSE.
“Due to the recent development in Yes Bank it has been decided that no fresh or renewal of bank guarantees and fixed deposit receipt issued by the bank limited will be accepted,” the NSE said in a statement.
The existing benefit provided to members towards Bank Guarantees and Fixed Deposit Receipt issued by Yes Bank in favour of NSE Clearing Ltd, shall also be reduced, it added.
“The financial position of Yes Bank has undergone a steady decline largely due to inability of the bank to raise capital to address potential loan and losses and resultant downgrades, triggering invocation of bond covenants by investors and withdrawal of deposits,” the NSE said in a separate circular.
Agencies